Max Howell

✨ Week 4 Progress Update: Building My iOS Expense Tracker ✨ Another week, another set of challenges tackled in my journey of building an iOS Expense Tracker for sole proprietors! Here's what I achieved: 1️⃣ Smarter Receipt Processing: Integrated Supabase Edge Functions to process receipts automatically. Now, you snap a photo, and key details are filled in without lifting a finger! 2️⃣ Currency Conversion System: What seemed like a “simple fix” turned into a multi-day deep dive. I built real-time currency handling for receipts based on the date and added account-level flexibility. Next up? Dynamic updates for changing account currencies! 3️⃣ Background AI: Expense creation is now smarter with background processing. Categorizing and analyzing receipts has never been easier. 4️⃣ Basic Dashboard: Introduced a clean, functional view of expenses. Still work to be done, but it’s coming together! 📌 Key Lesson: Freedom with discipline is key to progress. Focus on the process, iterate often, and don’t let perfection hold you back! Up next: - Building report export features (CSV/PDF) - Finalizing branding and logo - Launching the app on TestFlight for feedback Grateful for all the support and encouragement from this amazing community! 🙌 If you’re working on a side project, how’s it going? Drop a comment—I’d love to hear about it! #BuildInPublic #IndieHacker #iOSDev #Entrepreneurship #SwiftUI #StartupJourney

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🌟 Your App Deserves a Place on Shiprocket Appstore! 🌟 We’re excited to open the doors to Shiprocket’s App Store. If you’re a startup or developer with an innovative e-commerce solution, now’s the time to shine! Why List Your App with Us? ✅ Exposure to thousands of e-commerce businesses ✅ Increased downloads and user base ✅ Comprehensive marketing and technical support Interested in Listing? Fill out the form here: https://bit.ly/4eBpj6d Let’s build the future of e-commerce together! 🚀 🚀 #ecommerce #techstartup #appdevelopment #Shiprocket #entrepreneurship

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Three things I didn't know about launching on Product Hunt. ⤵⤵⤵ Shameless plug: If you like the following, Ubicloud is LIVE on Product Hunt (PH) now. Please support our launch: https://lnkd.in/eFZyy_tb 1/ When the PH day starts (one minute past midnight PST), your launch either gets featured or not. We didn't know ahead of time if Ubicloud would be featured. They say that reaching out Product Hunt and asking for feedback helps. So does creating a product teaser and building an audience ahead of the launch. 2/ The first hours (midnight to 4am PST) are crucial. If you're featured, everyone gets an equal amount of air time on the front page until 4:01am PST. After that, launches get sorted by popularity. I'm guessing launches that are above the fold get higher visibility. 3/ You can pick any day of the week (or month) for your launch. If you do well on a Monday, then you have a higher chance of winning the product of the week (because you're live for the entire week). We ran an analysis and found that surprisingly, Monday isn't the most competitive day. Competitiveness by day (lowest to highest): Sunday / Saturday, Friday / Monday, Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday. Again, if you like this, please support us on Product Hunt. Ubicloud + Kamal lets you deploy web apps anywhere using a completely open source stack.

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Sup fam!! Relationships are everything!! They're the core of your engineering platform. Your team's design docs, software patterns, pull requests, and GitOps workflows all need to pass through a complex network of relationships before becoming meaningful to stakeholders. Before that, they're just bytes sitting on Jeff Bezos' disks. How are your relationships doing? Which relationships need some light touching up? Which ones need some serious investment? How about that one person on that one team? How about on _your_ team? Are you tracking these gaps with the same effectiveness you're tracking tech debt? It takes an intentional effort to build meaningful connections and to show peers you're a stakeholder in _their_ success. It's worth your time -- not to mention you'll feel great!! Want to optimize your engineering platform? Start by investing in your relationships!

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Understanding CSR and SSR - Tech 101 for PMs! 🌐 When we visit a website, there are two main ways it can show us information: Client Side Rendering (CSR) and Server Side Rendering (SSR). :: Client Side Rendering (CSR) :: Client Side Rendering (CSR) means that most of the work happens in your web browser. The browser gets a small piece of information from the server and then builds the whole page right there. Think of CSR like making a sandwich at home. You get all the ingredients from the store, and then you put them together yourself. ➡️ CSR in action: If you visit Instagram on your phone, you might see the layout before photos fully appear—this is CSR in action! Advantages of CSR [1] Feels fast and smooth once everything is loaded [2] Great for websites that look like apps and need user interaction Disadvantages of CSR [1] Takes longer to load at first and can be slow on weaker connections [2] Crawling bots may find it difficult to crawl the website :: Server Side Rendering (SSR) :: Server Side Rendering (SSR) is when the server does most of the work. The server prepares the entire webpage and sends it to your browser all at once. Think of SSR like ordering a sandwich from a restaurant. You place your order, and they make it for you before serving it at your table. ➡️ SSR in action: When you search on Google, the results load quickly and show up all at once. Advantages of SSR [1] Faster initial load time [2] Good for SEO - crawlers can easily read the information Disadvantages of SSR [1] Pages might feel slower when you start clicking around [2] Needs more server power to handle each request In simple terms, CSR is like building the page on your device, while SSR sends you the completed page right away. Liked this? Repost and share with your network. #Technology #ProductManagers

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Features don’t have the same impact – whether in product development or life in general, prioritization is key. 🔑 Improve your products step by step, says Adrian Pica, former VP of Product Management at Bolt making data-backed decisions when it comes to priorities. MVPs help focus on what’s truly important, to be able to later expand and refine on strong fundamentals. If you’re operating under significant time pressure, make sure you: - practice ruthless prioritization - iterate iterate iterate - validate with the users with quick MVPs Can you prioritize (ruthlessly)?

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The "80/20 Principle" for Founders—explained in 1 minute 👇 𝟭. 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: 80% distribution, 20% product Focus on getting your product out there more than perfecting the product. 𝟮. 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵: 80% retention, 20% acquisition Keeping customers is far more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. 𝟯. 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘂𝗲: 80% existing customers, 20% new leads The majority of revenue will come from upsells and renewals over leads. 𝟰. 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀: 80% positioning tweaks, 20% actual price changes How you present the value of your product over constantly changing the price. 𝟱. 𝗕𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴: 80% customer experience, 20% logo design A strong brand is more about delivering a great customer experience than having a great logo. 𝟲. 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗲𝘀: 80% listening, 20% pitching Understand your customer’s needs BEFORE pitching your product. 𝟳. 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴: 80% empowering users, 20% company-led initiatives Empower your users to engage over top-down company initiatives. 𝟴. 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁: 80% core features, 20% nice-to-haves Keep improving essential, high-impact features over adding new ones. 𝟵. 𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲: 80% executing, 20% strategizing Planning is useless without the execution to make real progress. 𝟭𝟬. 𝗜𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀: 80% user feedback, 20% user behavior Gathering user feedback will tell you more than observing behavior. 𝟭𝟭. 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴: 80% value perception, 20% actual costs How customers perceive the value of your product can be a lot more than its cost. 𝟭𝟮. 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴: 80% word-of-mouth, 20% paid ads Organic growth is far more sustainable than relying heavily on paid ads. 𝟭𝟯. 𝗨𝘀𝗲𝗿 𝗼𝗻𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴: 80% aha moments, 20% feature tutorials Creating aha moments is more impactful than explaining it. 𝟭𝟰. 𝗨𝗜/𝗨𝗫: 80% intuitive flow, 20% aesthetic appeal Make it easy to navigate first, and then add aesthetics. 𝟭𝟱. 𝗩𝗶𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵: 80% reducing friction, 20% incentivizing sharing Making it easy for users to adopt your product works better than incentives. 𝟭𝟲. 𝗥𝗼𝗮𝗱𝗺𝗮𝗽: 80% market pull, 20% vision push Build what the market is asking for over trying to push a vision. 𝟭𝟳. 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: 80% context setting, 20% direct orders Providing the context and vision is more effective than micromanaging. 𝟭𝟴. 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄𝘀: 80% observing, 20% asking Observing how they react can tell you more than direct questions. 𝟭𝟵. 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴: 80% owning a niche, 20% broad appeal Owning a niche will bring more success than trying to appeal to everyone. 𝟮𝟬. 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲: 80% working on the business, 20% in the business Focus on the 80% that impacts the most growth and less on day-to-day operations. Share, save, bookmark, or print this goldmine for any founder. #strategy #startups #growth #technology #i5growth #i5invest Image Credit: Greg Isenberg

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The Real Challenge Behind Building Tech for Startups (Retaining Users After a Successful Launch) Pt. 2 Building PPLE App taught us that the journey doesn’t end when the product is delivered—infact, that was the easiest part. Similar to Instagram's Thread, we faced the crucial hurdle of retaining users a few weeks after a big launch. Here’s how we tackled this phase: 1. Partner Success Program: Our partners got discouraged from posting events on our platform due to the low engagement, so we agreed to post events on their behalf and at discounted prices (on our buck) to ensure engagement. 2. Push Notifications Ads: We sold ads to our partners at heavily discounted prices to our partners in the form of push notifications which helped in generating revenue. 3. Optimized user feedback loops: We set up systems to gather user feedback and used it to drive new features like birthday plans, celebrations which also drove engagement. The result? Our actions yielded great results but it wasn't sustainable. User retention rate peaked at 83% with a 143% MRR increase. However, we were burning cash like #moviepass we needed funding drastically. We took some drastic measures to extend our runway but I'll discuss that in the next part 😇 . Let me know if you have a question or want to share your experience! #Startups #PPLELabs #LessonsLearned #Founder #Userretention

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Stage 2/8: Building the Foundation – Crafting the Blueprint In our startup journey, after identifying the problem and initial product fit, the next critical step is building a solid foundation. At this stage, you’re establishing the core framework that will guide product development, team structure, and long-term growth. Here’s what this looks like: - Define Your MVP – Start with the core features that solve your customers’ main pain points. It’s easy to get pulled into adding features, but simplicity and focus keep you lean and help validate your product more effectively. - Assemble a Strong Core Team – Surround yourself with skilled people who believe in the mission and can adapt as needs evolve. A small, committed team often outperforms larger ones, especially in early stages. - Set Up Feedback Loops – Establish direct lines to your customers and stakeholders. Regular feedback will help you iterate quickly and align development with real-world needs. - Lay Down Operational Processes – Efficient workflows save time and energy down the road. Start simple with processes that can be scaled and refined as the company grows. - Map Financial Projections – While growth is the focus, keeping an eye on cash flow and expenses is essential. Outline your runway, investment needs, and sustainability goals. Stay tuned for more insights as we progress through each stage in our startup journey! #StartupJourney #Entrepreneurship #ProductDevelopment #MVP #BusinessGrowth

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At KushoAI, our goal is to make API testing autonomous so you never have to test APIs manually again. We solved it for testing individual APIs first. Because that’s the first thing that you test in a typical development lifecycle. But real world use cases are made up of multiple APIs interacting with each other. Keeping that in mind, we released our End-to-end (E2E) API testing feature last week. Using this, you'll be able to model API interactions in your business use case, let KushoAI tell you what could go wrong for each of these APIs (same way it works for an individual API) and test the entire use case for different combinations of scenarios with minimal manual effort. Here’s a short demo of E2E testing using KushoAI.

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Every hour spent on manual testing is an hour your team isn’t innovating. Many developers think slow, methodical manual testing is necessary for quality. But here’s the truth: AI-powered testing speeds things up without compromising on reliability. With Sentra, your team can: • Automate routine tests. • Run continuous checks in CI/CD. • Eliminate testing bottlenecks. The result? Faster releases, fewer bugs, and more time for what really matters: building amazing software. How is your team accelerating testing? Let’s chat in the comments. #ai #softwareengineering #coding #programming #softwaretesting

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🌟 Introducing ArchLabs' Innovative Team Model: Hero + Small Devs Concept! 🌟 At ArchLabs, we're committed to nurturing talent and delivering quality. We've developed an innovative approach to maximize both—the Hero + Small Devs concept. This model leverages the expertise of senior engineers (the "Hero") alongside our talented trainee engineers, offering clients exceptional service at a fraction of the cost. 💡 Why This Model? Cost-Effective Solutions: By involving trainee engineers, we provide top-tier development services at an unbeatable rate of just $200 per month per intern—less than $1 per hour! Quality Assurance: Our senior engineers guide and mentor the junior developers, ensuring high-quality output while giving our trainees invaluable real-world experience. Scalability with AI: We're harnessing the power of AI to further enhance the capabilities and efficiency of our team, aiming for seamless scalability. We're thrilled to share that our latest client, EtiqWise, has reaped the benefits of this approach. Here's what they had to say: "The team was highly professional and extremely attentive to all matters pertaining to developing our website." 🎉 Congratulations to EtiqWise for choosing ArchLabs! Your trust in our innovative model underscores its potential, and we’re excited about the future possibilities. Do you have an idea and want to see it come to life? Let's collaborate for a mutually beneficial cause. At ArchLabs, we're not just developing solutions; we're shaping the future of the tech industry, one intern at a time. #Innovation #TechDevelopment #TeamModel #HeroAndDevs #ArchLabs #ClientSuccess #EtiqWise #FutureOfTech #AI #QualityService #CostEffectiveSolutions

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Understand product metrics: Revenue, MRR, ARPU/ARPA Monthly Revenue: The total amount of money a company or product generates in one calendar month from all its activities, before deducting any expenses. MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue): The predictable amount of money your product generates from its subscribers every month. This should not include non-recurring fees, such as one-time-payments or any kind of setup/start fees. Average revenue per user/account (ARPU/ARPA): The average revenue one user generates per month. This helps you understand the value each user contributes to the revenue, aiding in financial planning. For most apps with free tiers, this only makes sense to calculate for active users. This is because the total users is an ever growing vanity metric and calculating a ratio with a vanity metric is meaningless as you would just get an ever-decreasing ratio since the total user count is just growing. Within your active users, it makes sense to calculate ARPU for different segments and user types. -- Follow me for more content like this and let me know if you need any help with your product analytics!

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This year, Nuclavis has helped organizations achieve 88% more fundraising success with the Nucleus mobile app platform 🚀. Our mission is to meet users where they are—on mobile—and we’re thrilled to share some milestones and upcoming innovations: 🎉 2024 Highlights: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ✅ Split Check Deposits: Allocate a single check to multiple recipients. ✅ Multilingual Support: Now supporting English, Spanish, and Canadian French. ✅ Multi-Platform Functionality: Seamlessly support diverse needs in one app. ✅ AAA Accessibility Compliance: Enhancing inclusivity. ✅ Expanded Integrations: Added OneCause, Neon One, DonorDrive , and Funraisin to bring our total to 7 supported platforms. 💡 Looking Ahead to 2025: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 1️⃣ In-app fundraising challenges. 2️⃣ Matching gift integration with Double the Donation. 3️⃣ Social sharing with TikTok and Instagram. 4️⃣ In-app notification center for better communication. 5️⃣ Actionable fundraising checklists to streamline efforts. We’ve listened closely to our customers through our product think tank, prioritizing features that will continue raising the bar for mobile fundraising. Together, we’re making a real impact. Thank you for your trust, support, and partnership. Wishing you and your families a wonderful holiday season! 🎄✨ Let’s make 2025 extraordinary! 💪 #Fundraising #Innovation #MobileSolutions #NonProfitTech #2025Goals

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Startups thrive on momentum, and keeping that initial spark alive is key! 🔥 To help promote a growth culture, here are eight key lessons I’ve learned through challenging experiences—so you don't have to learn them the hard way. These insights are designed to fuel your startup’s growth and prevent common pitfalls. 🚀 I’d love to hear about the key lessons you’ve learned in your startup journey. 🙏  Share your insights below or message me!  #StartupLife #Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth #StartupTips #Founders #StartupCommunity #EntrepreneurMindset #GrowthHacking #Innovation #BusinessLessons

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Security fail of the day. We have a couple of folks that we have to pay through Payoneer, my least favorite international payment provider. Apparently my password is too... long? This is a good example of why you don't roll your own #auth. #Firebase, for example, has a max password length of 4096 characters. I can use the entirety of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" as my password. Clerk.com suggests AT LEAST 64 characters. There's absolutely no reason to limit passwords to something like 30 characters.

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🚀 Swaystack's first conference! 🚀 Demoing Swaystack's solution for inactive checking accounts was an amazing experience! It was cool to hear about people's current checking account onboarding and get real-time feedback directly from dozens of financial institutions. People got most excited to see how Swaystack helps account holders: 1. Add funds by connecting external accounts 2. Increase direct deposit adoption by linking to payroll 3. Transfer subscriptions with Amazon, Netflix, Spotify, and more Big thanks to everyone who took the time to chat with us. Can't wait to put all this feedback to good use! Jack Henry - thanks for the amazing conference!

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